FLY Girl Institute

We believe Black and Brown girls are powerful and deserving of spaces that honor their full potential.

🧠 Mental health | 🎨 Culture | ✊🏾 Sisterhood | 🛠 Community Training & Development | Advocacy
💖 Joy is our foundation. (Families in Need of Direction) Design is a 501(c)(3) community-based organization founded by Kara James and Sharese Chapman, both black women Michigan natives who were frustrated

and saddened by the lack of progress related to safe spaces for black girls and other girls of color in Middle Tennessee. As they saw it, this reality was representative of a bigger problem; the constant failure to understand and "see" black women and how racism, intergenerational trauma, and gender discrimination affect them. Additionally, programs that did exist and posed as empowering and impactful for "at-risk" black girls often stemmed from Eurocentric perspectives that did not consider their specific needs. This framework sent a message that their blackness needed "fixing" as the curriculum focused on European standards that lead to exclusion, which affected their sense of worth and purpose. As a result of their findings, Sharese and Kara saw a huge opportunity to cultivate safe spaces for black girls and girls of color to "be" while feeling valued, supported, and empowered. Design was formed to serve middle and high school black girls and other girls of color through culturally relevant African and African American-centric models that foster sensitivity and understanding to girls of color's unique needs. partners with public school systems and courts to offer services that promote the healing and safety needed to mitigate the effects of intergenerational trauma and unhealthy responses to such trauma leading to mentally, socially, and economically healthy citizens. Additionally, the organization focuses on undoing the school pushout and the abuse to prison pipeline that overwhelmingly affects black and brown girls by driving them out of their schools into the justice systems because of adultification and direct and indirect trauma. The program and its services reiterate the notion that when a girl has a safe space that doesn't penalize her for who she is, a stronger sense of self and identity, support from the community, and an environment of learning and expression, she's given them permission to be the "F.L.Y Girl" she was birthed to be; a champion for herself, her school, her communities, and especially for the girls that are coming behind her."